Is random number generator's randomness modifiable?

Hallo.I have found myself being quite interested in the philosophical applications of research of quantum physics, and I would like to ask you about RNG.

I have read from several sources of experiments which claim that thoughts can affect results of a RNG simulation.If you put a person in front of a computer, which is programmed to randomly pick one of the numbers 0 and 1, the human can 'bend' the statistical results into showing more 0's or 1's simply by thinking, wishing, picturing or in other way wanting a certain number to show, he can do it.Before the time of computers, the same experiment was performed by flipping coins.

So, is RNG modifiable by thoughts or am I crazy for actually considering this?

This would be something akin to telekiesis. There is no scientific basis for this and there has never been presented any demonstration of it that has held up under scrutiny. I expect that it is the sort of thing that James Randi regularly debunks.

The "random" numbers generated by computers are almost always "pseudo random" numbers. That is, they "look" random, but are actually entirely deterministic.

Starting with a "seed", and some remarkably simple logic, you can generate a very long list of "seemlingly random" numbers (and these numbers can be consistent with quite advanced mathematical definitions of random - as long as you don't use too big a fraction of the sequence before it eventually repeats itself). But if you repeat the process on another day with the same starting "seed", you'll get exactly the same sequence!

Since the algorithmic generation of the numbers is done by very much the same process as anything else on a computer, there's no reason to suppose you could change the numbers by thinking about them any more than you could type characters or the screen or modify your bank-balence just by thinking about it. []

Usually if you want more-random numbers on a computer system you "randomise" the seed by setting it to some function of the number of microseconds the computer has been switched on for before running your program. But if you had two computers and you ran your program on both at exactly the same time (after switch on) you'd still get the exact same sequence from both.

This kind of "predictable" random numbers is no good at all for lotteries and the like, and consequently the authorities have very strict rules on random-number generation for that kind of purpose!

There are other ways of generating random numbers which aren't deterministic (like measuring the analog 'noise' in some electrical component) but these tend to have other problems with the distribution of numbers, the rate at which you can pull out numbers which are not correlated, susceptibility to electrical interference etc etc.If you wanted to believe in telekinesis (most scientists don't, I'm sure properly carried out tests have never shown anything) then you might argue that such non-deterministic methods might, possibly be susceptible to such influences. []Regular everyday computer-based "random"-number generators? No chance! []

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Owww... it looks like I overlooked the "quantum" part of your question.A quantum random number generator would be a "true" and "non-derministic" RNG ... but I'm pretty sure you'll still find that you can't change the answers by telekinesis.

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« Last Edit: 21/03/2011 00:42:03 by techmind »

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